OUR SCHOLARS | Dr. Ervand Abrahamian

Ervand Abrahamian is a lecturer at Baruch College and recognized as a Distinguished Professor of History after more than forty years of teaching experience. Abrahamian previously taught at the prestigious universities of Oxford, Columbia, and Princeton, in addition to the Graduate Center in the City University of New York. He received his B.A. from Oxford University and consequently attended Columbia University, where he obtained his Ph.D.

His book publications include: Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton University Press); The Iranian Mujahedin (Yale University Press); Khomeinism (University of California Press); Tortured Confessions (University of California Press); A History of Modern Iran (Cambridge University Press); and The Coup: 1953, The CIA, and the Roots of Modern US-Iran Relations (New Press). He is currently working on a book regarding the 1979 revolution in Iran.

Dr. Ervand Abrahamian is Featured in The Third Path

What Dr. Ervand Abrahamian Said

Oil and Arab States

This was really compounded by two pressures, one was the Arab-Israeli War when most of the Arab states stopped selling oil to countries that were supporting Israel, including United States, and this suddenly saw a quadrupling of the oil prices. It showed how much power the producing countries had if they cut production.

Oil Nationalization and the 1953 Coup in Iran

Another factor was that Gaddafi in Libya, having a number of advisers, mostly from the Arab countries who were very much inspired by [Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh’s] attempt to nationalize, they advised him on how to go about nationalizing the oil industry in Libya.

PostRevolutionary Iran

Nowadays, if you have plugged in to the state, you have more advantages. A businessman who have contacts with the state, whether they’re in the bazaar or not, or whether they come from the military, if they have these connections with the state, then they can get contracts, privileges, advantages, access to state money and that of course then gives them a head start over other people.